Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to an information processing apparatus including a semiconductor storage device, a magnetic disk storage device, and the like, and a control method of the information processing apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
A mirroring technique which stores data pieces with the same contents in a plurality of storage devices is known as a failure countermeasure of the storage device, such as a solid state drive (SDD) and a hard disk drive (HDD).
A mirroring system detects a failure of a storage device to prompt a user to replace a faulty storage device when a failure occurs in the storage device. More specifically, if a control unit of the mirroring system is not communicable with the storage device for a certain period of time, the control unit determines that a failure occurs in the storage device (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2011-51258, especially in paragraph 0012).
When it is determined that a failure occurs in the storage device, a serial number of the faulty storage device is stored in a memory. Then, if the faulty storage device is replaced with a new storage device of which serial number is different from the stored serial number, data stored in a normally operating storage device is rebuilt in the replaced new storage device.
With the recent raising of security awareness, a storage device is removed from an information processing apparatus and stored in a safe or the like at the end of daily operations to protect the storage device against theft.
In order to successfully remove the storage device, it is necessary to remove the storage device after shutdown processing (writing data to the storage device, stopping power supply to the storage device, and so on) is completed. It is because, if the storage device is removed before completion of the shutdown processing, a mirroring control unit in the mirroring system loses the ability to communicate with the storage device. When losing the ability to communicate with the storage device, the mirroring control unit determines that the storage device is faulty, as described above.
However, the storage device removed before the completion of the shutdown processing is not actually faulty. Therefore, a user would connect the storage device stored in the safe to the information processing apparatus to restart the operation.
The serial number of the storage device determined as faulty by the mirroring control unit is stored in the memory. Therefore, if the storage device (the storage device stored in the safe) is reconnected to the information processing apparatus, the information processing apparatus regards the reconnected storage device as a faulty device.
Especially, a recent information processing apparatus including a complicated system takes time to complete the shutdown processing, so that a situation may occur in which a user removes the storage device before the completion of the shutdown processing.
Accordingly, the storage device removed from the information processing apparatus before the completion of the shutdown processing is regarded as a faulty device and cannot be used even it is not actually faulty.